the faux bohemian

Posts tagged film history

6 notes

vistavision:

“At Cortina d’Ampezzo, there was a chairlift that went up to the top of the mountain, with a restaurant at the top. The height went from 2,000 ft. to 8,000 ft. and it was a beautiful place. One day in particular began with stunning weather, so David and I went up to the mountain to have lunch. We were dressed casually in slacks, but once we got up there, the bad weather moved in, and it got cold. Really cold.
As we came down after lunch, Niv was sitting in the chairlift saying matter-of-factly, ‘My cock is frozen. I have a frozen cock. Frozen solid.’ When we got down to the hotel, Marion was waiting for us. David explained his predicament and asked Marion to sit in his lap and save the life of his favorite friend. Having a strong maternal disposition, Marion sat in his lap and saved a very valuable part of David’s life.
Niv ordered a brandy. Then he told me to follow him, and we went to the john where he unzipped and dropped his unit into the brandy snifter to try to save it from frostbite…It was at that point that the bathroom door swung open, and in came a man in a military uniform. He looked at David with his cock in a brandy glass, and me staring at it, and stopped dead…Niv looked up and said, ‘I always give it a little drink from time to time.’”
- Robert Wagner [Pieces of My Heart]

Amazing.

vistavision:

“At Cortina d’Ampezzo, there was a chairlift that went up to the top of the mountain, with a restaurant at the top. The height went from 2,000 ft. to 8,000 ft. and it was a beautiful place. One day in particular began with stunning weather, so David and I went up to the mountain to have lunch. We were dressed casually in slacks, but once we got up there, the bad weather moved in, and it got cold. Really cold.

As we came down after lunch, Niv was sitting in the chairlift saying matter-of-factly, ‘My cock is frozen. I have a frozen cock. Frozen solid.’ When we got down to the hotel, Marion was waiting for us. David explained his predicament and asked Marion to sit in his lap and save the life of his favorite friend. Having a strong maternal disposition, Marion sat in his lap and saved a very valuable part of David’s life.

Niv ordered a brandy. Then he told me to follow him, and we went to the john where he unzipped and dropped his unit into the brandy snifter to try to save it from frostbite…It was at that point that the bathroom door swung open, and in came a man in a military uniform. He looked at David with his cock in a brandy glass, and me staring at it, and stopped dead…Niv looked up and said, ‘I always give it a little drink from time to time.’”

- Robert Wagner [Pieces of My Heart]

Amazing.

(Source: squirtletracy)

Filed under david niven robert wagner film history badassery

2 notes

theoldfamiliarfaces:

Filmed July 26, 1900/1903?, on the roof of the Bronx Biograph studio:
This scene is laid in the parlor of a New York tenement. Two watchers at the wake are smoking and drinking, while the widow is weeping over the coffin. The attention of the three is distracted for an instant, and the supposed corpse rises up, drinks all the beer in the pitcher which is standing on a table nearby, and lies down in the coffin again. The mourners return, and seeing that the beer is gone, engage in a controversy over it. During the scrap the corpse jumps out of the coffin and takes part in the melee.

I’ve got plans for my funeral.

Filed under 1900s american mutoscope and biograph film history death

4 notes

Keeping this in mind for my master’s thesis

After a terrible blizzard in early 1927, the mining town of Silverton, Colorado was snowed in for a solid month. Nobody could get in or out of there, except by dogsled.

As Exhibitors Herald reported, “The mushers tried to supply the town with fresh food, but the miners favored sacrificing other things rather than motion pictures. New films were brought in almost daily.”

(Exhibitors Herald, March 26, 1927, pg. 17.)

Someday (maybe master’s thesis?), I want to write about film viewership - the way that people became obsessed with the cinema in its first two or three decades of existence. This kind of stuff is nuts!

via The Silent Movie Blog

Filed under master's thesis cinema film history 1920s film viewership silent movie blog

71 notes

I visited Tall Dan in Baltimore today and went to the most awesome antique store I’ve ever seen, The Antique Man, in Fells Point. The little shop is somewhere between a freak show, a museum, and an old fashioned knick-knackery, with shelves of world’s fair souvenirs and advertising swag surrounded by felt pennants, neon signs, original movie posters, and what seemed like hundreds of unique paintings of the Natty Boh man. Add to that equation several old glass museum cases filled with four legged chickens, mermaid skeletons, and a two headed mummy, and you begin to get the idea of why I was in heaven.
The affable owners told us that they’re constantly - and pleasantly - surprised by the quality stuff that people just bring to them (“We pay top dollar, of course!”), and that they don’t even have to do much auction and estate sale cruising. Still, I had to wonder how they acquired the several stacks of old lobby cards, film stills, and promotional photos that I spent a good hour looking through today. They must have raided a storage room in an old theater that was slated for demolition. Or something! In a pile of the aforementioned photos, I caught “Myrna Loy” out of the corner of my eye, but it was only a credit line for a film at the bottom of a photo of her male co-lead. Drat. Couldn’t find a photo of her, though there were plenty of others that I would have loved to have taken home.
In the end, I took home a nice cache of selected ephemera for a cool $20. I’d go in to more detail, but some of it is destined to be presents for selected dear readers.

I visited Tall Dan in Baltimore today and went to the most awesome antique store I’ve ever seen, The Antique Man, in Fells Point. The little shop is somewhere between a freak show, a museum, and an old fashioned knick-knackery, with shelves of world’s fair souvenirs and advertising swag surrounded by felt pennants, neon signs, original movie posters, and what seemed like hundreds of unique paintings of the Natty Boh man. Add to that equation several old glass museum cases filled with four legged chickens, mermaid skeletons, and a two headed mummy, and you begin to get the idea of why I was in heaven.

The affable owners told us that they’re constantly - and pleasantly - surprised by the quality stuff that people just bring to them (“We pay top dollar, of course!”), and that they don’t even have to do much auction and estate sale cruising. Still, I had to wonder how they acquired the several stacks of old lobby cards, film stills, and promotional photos that I spent a good hour looking through today. They must have raided a storage room in an old theater that was slated for demolition. Or something! In a pile of the aforementioned photos, I caught “Myrna Loy” out of the corner of my eye, but it was only a credit line for a film at the bottom of a photo of her male co-lead. Drat. Couldn’t find a photo of her, though there were plenty of others that I would have loved to have taken home.

In the end, I took home a nice cache of selected ephemera for a cool $20. I’d go in to more detail, but some of it is destined to be presents for selected dear readers.

(Source: valentinovamp)

Filed under Myrna Loy the antique man baltimore tall dan antiquing lobby cards film history